METHOD OF PROVIDING SECURE ACCESS TO COMPUTER RESOURCES

摘要

A method of providing varying levels of secure access to computer resources. A certificate is used to identify a particular data requester and the certificate is authenticated using asymmetrical encryption techniques, such as public-priva te key pairs. One or more trust authorities may be consulted to ascribe a trust lev el to the certificate, which is an indication of the veracity of the identity of the data requester. Individual system users may set differing levels of access to a number of shared system resources for a particular data requester. The authenticated and verified data requester is then provided with the pre-set level of access to the desired shared resource. The level of access to a particular shared system resource therefo re depends upon the user the data is being accessed through, the authenticated identity of the data requester, and their ascribed trust level. The shared resource m ay comprise data and/or an application module that is accessed or executed through a secure symmetric encryption tunnel.